Their problem is their oil.
It’s dirty with sulfur, which is expensive to remove, and it’s super thick, which makes it difficult to refine.
Their numero uno customer WAS the US. We had the refining processes and capability to handle its oil and not many others did.
We now don’t need their oil, since we have plenty of our own.
Their oil doesn’t sell readily on the world market, so they have surpluses they can’t sell.........................
Bingo. And Venezuelan oil is difficult to sell even to other South American markets, since we don’t know how many refineries in South America can process the high-sulfur/high-viscosity oil from this country. Worst of all, Chavez and Maduro drove out all the best petroleum engineers from the country, so Venezuela’s oil production infrastructure is falling apart, too.
Wasn’t Keystone finished meaning we can substitute heavy Canadian crude for Venezuala’s crude?
On a separate issue ..I was talking to a truck driver a couple of years ago...I think in Wyoming or Colorado...anywy he was hauling molten sulphur from a refinery for processing.
I read here in FR a few weeks ago something about them adding a lot of water to their oil shipments which was creating problems (duh) when it reached the refineries in China and the Chinese were none too happy about it